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Anatman Means No Ego

A few years ago I listened to a DVD Great
Courses lecture series on Buddhism by Professor Malcolm David Eckel.
One of the ideas Eckel emphasized has helped me understand a lot more
about Buddhist notions.

He explained that in the cosmology of the time Buddha lived, the
universe was thought to be uncreated and everlasting. It had always
been going on and always would go on,
forever and ever and ever. The reason for seeking nirvana as extinction
was less because life was suffering than that life was unendurably
long. It was never going to stop. Thus the Buddha taught a process for
ending the recycling and breaking out of time altogether by ceasing to
reincarnate. That's what nirvana means in its original conception:
extinction, like a fire is extinguished when all trhe fuel has been
used up.

I think it is in that same cosmology that we need to understand
“anatman,” the foundational principle of Buddhism that the atman
doesn’t really exist. In the context of that cosmic time,
“atman” has existed
forever and going to exist forever in an endless cycle of
reincarnation.

Anatman means there’s no enduring soul. A human
being is what they are in this lifetime, an intersection of causes and
effects that during its period of manifestation is consistent and
understands itself from its perspective on its experience.
This is in contrast to the Hindu “Brahman is Atman” theory according to
which the deep human soul is one with God. Buddha says that what
“reincarnates” is the karmic consequences of a person’s actions, not
the “person.”

Buddhism does teach a concept of Oneness. "We are all One." The joke is
that the fundamental Buddhist prayer is what you say to the hot dog
vendor: "Make me one with everything."

In that cosmology of everlasting time, I think the denial of a soul is
less that the soul does not exist as an ontological entity in an
individual person, but that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t
matter, it is insignificant.

This is a theme we are now seeing revealed in science. "We are all One”
is what you realize when you see the Earth as Carl Sagan’s "pale blue
dot" from the perspective of Voyager out there at the edge of the solar
system. The Cosmos is huge beyond human imagining. The builfing block
of the universe is the galaxy. We are tiny, tiny specks within a single
galaxy that is but one of at least a hundred million galaxies (in the
observable sky).

This issue of soul and individuality is a matter of perspective. The
“illusion” of self only exists and matters at the human scale. If your
perspective gets smaller and you’re looking from the POV of the cells
or molecules, the “human being” has disappeared altogether. If your
perspective gets bigger and you’re looking from the POV of the
galaxies, the whole earth and all of human history has disappeared into
insignificance.

I think that’s what anatman — and being one with everything — means.

We are freed from suffering by rising to a higher perspective.

It is interesting that the thought of everlasting, unending time seems
tiresome and unbearable. It results in a kind of Existentialist
"nausea." The thought of infinite space and cosmic hugeness, on the
other hand, results in a sense of insignificance that is kind
of joyful, nostalgic, and liberated.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.